Carrier Landing Styles

SabreAce said:
Thrakhath bailed out of a fighter at least twice, though that may have been a custom modification for the Prince's fighter.

IIRC, the reason for no ejection seats in the Dralthis in SM2 was a conflict between human and Kilrathi technology.
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No, they just couldn't modify the craft to allow someone to eject from it. Hunter noted the lack of such in Freedom Flight - the hatch is on the bottom, and well away from the seat itself. The top doesn't blow off, like on human fighters of that era.
 
ChanceKell said:
I was under the impression that the Kilrathi never developed magnetic atmospheric shields. In fact, I thought that Bear mentioned in False Colors that one of the disadvantages the Kilrathi had during the war was the lack of airshields. Also, didn't Hobbes... "remove" the crew of his ship by opening the hangar door, while they were all in it, the only way he survived was by wearing a spacesuit?

From what I read and can tell, the Kilrathi don't have airshields. That's why I had a problem with Fleet Action and it's ignorance of what was already written. I could be wrong, of course. Haven't read False Colors and End Run in a while now.
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No, that comment comes from "Freedom Flight", where Hunter notes the lack of airshields when he lands on the Ras Nik'hra the first time. In WC4N, the Kilrathi transports Blair lands on are too old or too poorly maintained to have airshields, so use the clamshell doors to close up. The WC3 dreadnought may have air shields, and we know that they did by False Colors on the KIS Karga.
 
I knew there was a lack of airshields in Freedom Flight. Guess I need to recheck False Colors. Thanks for the clarification.
 
ChanceKell said:
I was under the impression that the Kilrathi never developed magnetic atmospheric shields. In fact, I thought that Bear mentioned in False Colors that one of the disadvantages the Kilrathi had during the war was the lack of airshields. Also, didn't Hobbes... "remove" the crew of his ship by opening the hangar door, while they were all in it, the only way he survived was by wearing a spacesuit?

From what I read and can tell, the Kilrathi don't have airshields. That's why I had a problem with Fleet Action and it's ignorance of what was already written. I could be wrong, of course. Haven't read False Colors and End Run in a while now.
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False Colors talks about how they are eventually able to get shielding up to a level so that it can retain an atomosphere inside the ship. Otherwise they had to due all the repair work in pressure suits. In the Hobbes situation I think he most likely just turned the air shield off and depressurized the deck. The Blast doors were merely for protecting the launch area during attacks.
 
Dundradal said:
False Colors talks about how they are eventually able to get shielding up to a level so that it can retain an atomosphere inside the ship. Otherwise they had to due all the repair work in pressure suits. In the Hobbes situation I think he most likely just turned the air shield off and depressurized the deck. The Blast doors were merely for protecting the launch area during attacks.
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No - the hangar bay was open to space - Hunter makes a comment about the Kats not having perfected the atmospheric containment field technology that Confed used on their hangar bays. That's why he had to seal his suit when he popped the top on his fighter and entered an airlock before he could actually get into the ship itself, where Spirit and Hobbes were waiting.
 
Haesslich said:
No - the hangar bay was open to space - Hunter makes a comment about the Kats not having perfected the atmospheric containment field technology that Confed used on their hangar bays. That's why he had to seal his suit when he popped the top on his fighter and entered an airlock before he could actually get into the ship itself, where Spirit and Hobbes were waiting.
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Well it appears that the Bhantkara class heavy carriers did have this technology and heavy blast doors.
 
Of course freedom flight was in my opinion a very good book. The look into the Kilrathi was good. The thing I remember most is in one chapter they describe the Rapier as "huge", and the Raptor as "Tiny", go figure.
 
Dundradal said:
Well it appears that the Bhantkara class heavy carriers did have this technology and heavy blast doors.
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I mentioned that in an earlier response - remember that False Colors takes place at least thirteen years after the events of Freedom Flight, and that she was a real carrier whereas the Ras Nik'hra was a cruiser.
 
Some thread-wide comments:

* All carrier operations are essentially similar - with catapults ejecting fighters forward and a recovery deck for... recovering them. About half the carrier designs we see (Ranger, Concordia, Confederation and Vesuvius) have a single physical deck that's used for both operations. The other half (Bengal, Lexington, Midway) have two independent areas for launch and recovery. The change doesn't seem to be a scientific development, as the designs are fairly evenly mixed across the timeline: Ranger (2584), Bengal (2619), Concordia (2634), Concordia (2665), Lexington (2668), Vesuvius (2673), Midway (2681).

* The Kilrathi do, in many cases, have ejection seats. Kilrathi ejection seats are a common bit of space debris in Wing Commander III. We see Thrakhath and Khasra both eject in Wing Commander II... and we even see Dralthi II-style ships with ejection sets on Wing Commander Academy. Conversely, we know that certain Kilrathi ships *don't* have ejection seats: the Dralthi II in SM2, the ultra-expendable Salthi and Krant and so forth.

* "Phase Shields" generally refers to the 'quick-recharge' technology pioneered on capital ships in Wing Commander 2 (and appearing everywhere henceforth in the timeline). Though the term technically applies to all shields, the earlier AS-WC1 shields are generally called Meson Shields.

* 'Air Shields' seem to appear only on Kilrathi carrier designs (and not on cruisers/destroyers/etc). I believe we see them several times during the course of the Wing Commander Academy series' - on the Princess' carrier and on Thrakhath's dreadnought.
 
I'm not sure other sources like novels or cartoon even differentiate the landing system. It's probably a game engine thing. They could do it on WC3 and it was cool, so they did it. And they made WCP just like WC1 for sentimental reasons. :D
 
Why would Confed (I'm just looking at Psychs site here) decom the Armageddon in '69 if she was the most powerful carrier Confed would have for 4 years until the Vesuvius came online.
 
Sylvester.

The Armageddon is quite controversial, we never seen the thing in the game so no one knows what class it really is. If it was Concordia-class or whatnot, I guess the decision can go either way, but the point is that it's still a carrier.

I personally made it a Confed-class because I wanted the Behemoth picture on Joans to be compared to an existing dreadnought (just like it was on the WC3 novel), and it was less of a hassle and a waste of time then try to make a new dreadnought class outright. If I made a new dreadnought class, I would have been tripping on fanboy territory.

As for it being decommissioned, I just said that because I wanted to show the move from using ships like those and a lean towards using Concordia-class as mainstay standard carriers (once again) after the Kilrathi War.
 
Catapults help the fighters get up to speed a lot faster than just lesiurely cruising out of the launch area would.
 
In the TPOF novel, it seems that such a "liesurely cruise" out of a deck is impossible. Something about you more or less crash before you get out of the airlock. Hence the use of JATO bottles.

I always thought the whole takeoff/landing thing was kinda stuipid, considering it's in space where you don't have to worry about gravity.
 
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